An 8-Trak tape—hand labeled: unfurl a nicotine dusk | Side B: 'cause they are watching.

An 45 RPM vinyl record—printed with crossed palms and the figure of a lone surfer in an mohair cardigan crossing Venice Beach. | Reverse. Side B: Around the corner---beneath an Wegman’s sign---a Cadillac series sixty-two convertible goes up in flames.

Playing on the AM frequency | "Funny how time slips away...

Playing on the FM frequency | ...just take it further."

Playing as a subsidized placeholder for the auxiliary comms on the police radio, queued and broadcast—thinned with intermittent static—-from some battered Gibson LG-3 hooked up to an WWII surplus radio transmitter tied to some farmstead beyond the sandstone buttes.

The Plymouth Volare is a compact car manufactured by the Chrysler Corporation from 1976–1980 (sales flyer) for its Plymouth and Dodge divisions, the latter being simply rebranded under a different moniker and sold under the Dodge Aspen. The law enforcement package of the Plymouth Volare, along with its counterparts from Ford and GM—would go on to participate in the numerous shootouts, homicides, and street chases that characterized Reagan’s War On Drugs.

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This wasn’t the first instance of Chrysler rebranding its consumer-grade cars for police service—the company had been manufacturing beat cop cars since its very inception in the 1920s, but struck gold at the beginning of the 1960s with the Chrysler Enforcer—the police package of the Chrysler Newport (back) the first generation of which (1959-1961) signified the final hurrah for slick, BOAC Comet and Roswell style design before cars rounded out into matchboxes and grew afterburners with the world's attention gripped fast on the Apollo missions. No-knock tetraethyl leaded gasoline, the fumes spit directly out with no middleman with an screen. Terrible mileage. No airbags. Ineffective seatbelts, if any at all. You had to shell out extra for power steering. Crash protection? Nonexistent. But the tailfins sure look gorgeous.

Whereas much of the pieces I've posted before on the WL were the equivalent of taking an short drive at 3AM to the McDonalds in the next town over for an couple cheeseburgers and several glasses of Coca-Cola, the time behind this one was long. Exceptionally long. Like taking an road trip across state and international lines with nothing but an ferry ticket, several changes of clothes and an copper statue of Sun-Yat-Sen strapped on the ski-rack. It was originally written in December of 2022, in one flashpoint of an weekend wracked with dry-cut visions of sweater weather klaxons and lead sleds skimming around tight corners and revised continuously while in storage over the course of 2023. Mental health issues and college burnout since, for a lack of a better term, consumed the better of me, but I'm incredibly happy with the end result. I do hope you enjoy.